Contact Print Notebook

Description

The A5 contact print notebook contains 68 pasted-in black and white contact prints. The prints are accompanied by Kissling's ms. notes, including locations, dates, OS grid references, informant details and notes on the subject of the print. There are further ms. notes [?in the hand of Stewart Sanderson] addressing additional questions on the photographs and their subjects to Kissling, followed by Kissling's ms. responses. The photographs were all taken in North Yorkshire, namely in Wensleydale, Swaledale and Arkengarthdale. The subject matter includes hedge-laying, a cast-iron trough, an old smelt mill, a pig mallet, a salving bowl, a wooden skillet and butter hands, a lemon squeezer, tallow candle-making, lime kilns, a fossil, a slipper for stopping cart wheels, putty lime shovels, a gripper spade, scraping a pig after slaughter, a sheep stool, a pig stool, a saddler's clam and a timber-buyer's scribble. A number of these contact prints were acquired as black and white photographic prints
for the Photo File. See the list below for references to individual photographic prints.


Also contained in this file are four photocopied A4 sheets of information on apparatus provided by, and 16mm educational films produced by Brun Educational Films Ltd. These include details of Sam Hanna's 'Old English Crafts' series of films, and the series 'Wonderful Britain' and 'Nature Study'.

Biography or history

Dr. Werner Friedrich Theodor Kissling was born on 11 April 1895, at Heinzdorf, near Breslau, Silesia (then Germany, now Poland). During World War One he served in the Prussian Guards and in the German Navy. Following the war, he studied international law and history at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin, and at the Alberts University in Königsberg; undertook civil service training at the Consular School in Vienna; and was involved in work for the Consular Service of the Weimar Republic.


After time spent at Cambridge University in the early 1930s, Kissling seems to have fully engaged in his interest in photographically recording traditional culture and traditional ways of life. He spent the summer of 1934 filming on the island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides, and subsequently produced the first film to feature Gaelic speech, 'A Poem of Remote Lives'.


On returning from a study trip to New Zealand in 1939, Kissling was arrested due to his status as former German diplomat. He was interned from 1939-1942, first in the Tower of London, and then on the Isle of Man. He was released following intervention from sympathetic parties.


In 1952, Kissling purchased Kings Arms Hotel in Melrose (Scottish Borders). It was also in this year that he approached the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh regarding the possibility of there being research funds available to undertake photographic fieldwork on the School's behalf. Between 1952 and 1961, Kissling was engaged periodically but regularly as an outside fieldworker by the School of Scottish Studies, to photograph traditional activities in the Hebrides, the Scottish Borders and south-western Scotland. Stewart Sanderson, the Director of the School during this time, was keen to employ Kissling on a more permanent basis, but finances proved a barrier. By 1961 the School of Scottish Studies was no longer able to employ Kissling as a fieldworker.


In 1960, Stewart Sanderson took up a lecturing post in the School of English at the University of Leeds, where he was also charged with the organisation and implementation of a Folk Life Survey which would initially focus on Yorkshire. From 1962-1966, Kissling was employed for three months each summer as a temporary fieldworker to undertake photographic fieldwork in North Yorkshire for the Survey. The photographs taken during this period formed the basis of the Photo File, with Kissling's contribution to the Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture's photographic collections amounting to over 1100 photographic prints and over 120 reels and strips of negatives on 35 mm film.


Kissling was offered a permanent post as part-time Research Archivist at the Institute of Dialect and Folk Life Studies (IDFLS) in 1967, and was active in this post from January to November of that year. Following his resignation, he became involved with work at the Dumfries Museum and Camera Obscura and continued to contribute to its collections until near the end of his life. He also continued to photograph aspects of traditional culture and activities, and was still contributing to the Photo File in 1968. The last of Kissling's photographs at the Dumfries Museum date to the mid-1970s.


Werner Kissling died on 3 February 1988 at the Moorlands Nursing Home in Dumfries.


This brief biography is based on correspondence held by the LAVC and the Dumfries Museum and Camera Obscura (http://www.scottishmuseums.org.uk/museums/by_name/d/dumfries_museum_and_camera_obscura.asp); and on information from two publications by Michael Russell: 'A Poem of Remote Lives: The Enigma of Werner Kissling 1895-1988' (Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 1997); and 'A Different Country: The Photographs of Werner Kissling' (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2002).

Access and usage

Reproduction

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Material in this collection is in copyright. Photocopies or digital images can only be supplied by the Library for research or private study within the terms of copyright legislation. It is the responsibility of the researcher to obtain the copyright holder's permission to reproduce for any other purpose. Guidance is available on tracing copyright status and ownership.

Related material

Copies of Sam Hanna's film 'The Ropemaker', and stills from 'The Clogger', are held at LAVC/FIL/F001 and LAVC/FIL/F004 respectively. Further printed information on Sam Hanna's 'Old English Crafts' films can be found in the Folk Life File at LAVC/FLF/1/2/3 and LAVC/FLF/3/7/3.



There are over 1100 photographs by Werner Kissling, mostly taken in North Yorkshire, in the LAVC photographic collections. See LAVC/PHO.


Ms. notes by Kissling on cow clubs in Arkengarthdale and Wensleydale are held at LAVC/FLF/3/3/1.


Ms. notes by Kissling on the Foresters' Walk in Coverdale and its bye-laws are held at LAVC/FLF/5/5.


Correspondence between Kissling and an IDFLS archivist, regarding photographs including LAVC/PHO/P1137 and LAVC/PHO/P1138, is held with archivists' correspondence at LAVC/ARC/1/1.


Correspondence relating to the payment of Kissling for fieldwork undertaken in Yorkshire for the Folk Life Survey is held at LAVC/STA/1/1/3/6.

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